GADGETWISE; A New Leapster to Battle Summer Boredom

By WARREN BUCKLEITNER

Published: June 17, 2010

This week, Leapfrog unveiled Leapster Explorer, a re-engineered, Flash-based edition of one of its most established educational gadgets. It will cost $70 and is aimed at ages 4 to 9. And when it arrives in stores on July 15, it will face stiff competition, far greater the original Leapster did in 2003, when the Game Boy Advance was state-of-the-art.

Among the competitors these days are the Nintendo DSi XL, the Fisher-Price iXL and VTech's FLIP and MobiGo. Leapster Explorer must also face down the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad, as well as other smartphones, each with swelling app libraries.

Leapfrog hopes to make inroads by playing up the educational angle.

The games I tried out seemed right out of the school curriculum, seasoned with characters from Toy Story 3, Dora, Star Wars, SpongeBob and the National Football League. A USB link lets you download additional ''Leaplets,'' or apps, including e-books from Leapfrog's TAG library for reading enrichment.

Powered by 4 AA batteries or AC power, Leapster Explorer's mono-touch screen is clear but cramped, with fonts that can be hard to read. There's no backward compatibility with your existing Leapster cartridges.

While handing your child an app-ladden iPhone can be a hit-or-miss experience, all the Leapster games are configured to a single grade level at once. Because up to three children of different ages can have log-in names, Leapster Explorer can keep the education spark alive this summer. It's a lot more fun than homework!

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.